During the last ten years, many efforts have been made to find new types of catalysts, either in the zeolitic field, or in the crystalline silica field.
One problem with zeolite catalysts, however, is that they are subject to rapid deactivation in the presence of even small amounts of water. Rapid deactivation means that a high rate of conversion of reactants to products cannot be maintained over a long period of time thus requiring expensive catalyst changeouts or regeneration procedures which greatly reduce the efficiency of the overall process.
There is, therefore, a need for a catalyst displaying a high steam stability together with an excellent catalytic activity in alkylation reactions and particularly in para alkylation reactions.